Republican bill stops funding to states issuing DL's to illegals

[Hardcandy]

What does a Drivers License have to do with immigration?

It just makes sure drivers have the proper skills and training?

A "Drivers License" has nothing to do with "immigration" per say; but it has a great deal to do with illegal immigration.

Allowing illegal aliens to legally obtain Drivers Licenses not only legitimizes their crime, it diminishes its seriousness; which results in further escalating the crime.

I heard an interesting quote not long ago;
"When a crime is ignored it becomes rampant"
"When a crime is rewarded it becomes epidemic"

I'm pretty sure the US has reached the epidemic stage.
So thank God for Donald Trump!

 

[Rigby5]

That sounds cool and all but then those pesky facts get in your way AGAIN...It looks like broke white trash are smoking weed and voting for free shit right along with you filthy degenerates...no?
Just say it bud...you love your beaners because they'll work for a slave wage without complaining or expecting any conditions...they'll offer after hour blow-jobs if you promise they can keep their gig as shitter polisher...we get it bud, you love your pet humans / 21st century slaves.

GUy, you are confused, are you for capitalism or aren't you? Or are you only for government intervening when it benefits you?

Again, if you have failed so badly at being a professional that your job is threatened by an undocumented immigrant with no money, no connections and a limited grasp on the English Language, then you really are a 'Broke Loser". but that's on you, not them.

I've told you many times before bud...My 'job' requires intelligence, people and communication skills, cash flow, articulation of the english language, the ability to problem solve...I can't smell like a cross between Modello, Tapatio and asshole....Wetbacks are not a threat to my profession....See, unlike you unAmerican pieces of shit, I see beyond my household, I look out for my fellow REAL Americans....you wouldn't understand as you post from your cardboard box in Tijuana.

I have worked with people from everywhere, and never found there to be any significant difference in skill levels.
Immigrants can easily do your job as well as you, if they get the proper training.
And the US is based on immigration.
There is no one here who is not an immigrant of the descendant of an immigrant.
In fact, the most important advantage of the US is that it exposes people to more different cultures, so that we can pick and choose what we like, instead of having customs and rituals forced upon us by tradition.

I don't have the energy to dig too deep on this but you're either super confused, stupid or flat out lying to yourself if you honestly believe that bullshit...There is a ton of data out there that proves everything you said as total bullshit.

There is ZERO data indicating any significant differences between different races, much less mere nationalities.
The slight difference that can be detected are insignificant compared to the variances between individuals of one race or nationality.
As a teacher, I have had first hand experience and can assure you that every race and nationality has about the same capacity to learn and progress from what they have learned.
What we think are difference between groups are actually only differences in educational background.

 

[Rigby5]

In Britain you have the option to buttress UH with a private plan and many there are very unhappy with the UH system. They are also much smaller than the US in terms of population and they don’t have the law that if you’re born there to illegals you automatically become a citizen. I am sure you don’t want to go there. And malpractice insurance is sky high and impacts many MDs. In Britain it costs a lot less to become a doctor as well. I am Sure you don’t want to discuss that either.

I'm all for making it cheaper to become a doctor. We should provide scholarships to promising medical students.

Only 11% of Britons have supplemental health insurance.

England : International Health Care System Profiles

British people are happier with their health care system than we are with ours.

They do? N.H.S. Overwhelmed in Britain, Leaving Patients to Wait

If we change the 14th Amendment, improve our immigration laws and deport the majority of the illegals here, give doctors a 10% tax rate for their first 30 years of practice I would support UH. Otherwise it would never work here due to costs and likely doctor shortages.

Immigrants have an almost negligable effect on our medical costs, and it is easy to have many more doctors if we just lower tuition costs.

 

[Rigby5]

I kept my doctor and insurance. So did over 98 percent of Americans

Trump stated before he was elected that he had a plan that was better and cheaper than Obamacare. Turned out he had nothing and ordered Congress to come up with something and they failed miserably

Who told the bigger lie?

You are retired. You didn’t go on the ACA. 98%? Link it.

The fact insurance companies changed their policies so that you could not keep your old doctor, is not the fault of ACA.

What? Why are you responding to me? I never said I went on the ACA? You’re batshit crazy. Get lost.

I never said YOU went on ACA.
What I said is that ACA never caused anyone to lose their old doctor.
That was insurance companies, who deliberately made people lose their old doctor by trying to make more money from us.
ACA had nothing to do with it.

Did I? Link it! I never Said that you liar! Link it now. You fat idiot.

Look at what I wrote again.
No where do I say that you said anything at all.
A lot of people are critical of ACA because they lost their old doctors, and the main point I was making is that they are wrong to blame ACA.
ACA had nothing to do with it.
It was not ACA that prevented people from keeping their old doctors, it was their insurance companies deliberately trying to harm people in retaliation for ACA.

 

[Thinker101]

In Britain you have the option to buttress UH with a private plan and many there are very unhappy with the UH system. They are also much smaller than the US in terms of population and they don’t have the law that if you’re born there to illegals you automatically become a citizen. I am sure you don’t want to go there. And malpractice insurance is sky high and impacts many MDs. In Britain it costs a lot less to become a doctor as well. I am Sure you don’t want to discuss that either.

I'm all for making it cheaper to become a doctor. We should provide scholarships to promising medical students.

Only 11% of Britons have supplemental health insurance.

England : International Health Care System Profiles

British people are happier with their health care system than we are with ours.

They do? N.H.S. Overwhelmed in Britain, Leaving Patients to Wait

If we change the 14th Amendment, improve our immigration laws and deport the majority of the illegals here, give doctors a 10% tax rate for their first 30 years of practice I would support UH. Otherwise it would never work here due to costs and likely doctor shortages.

Immigrants have an almost negligable effect on our medical costs, and it is easy to have many more doctors if we just lower tuition costs.

 

[Rigby5]

What you are saying that we should just pack it in, quit, turn out the lights, it's hopeless.

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

Medical savings accounts do not at all work.
That is because the amount you would have to save in order to be able to pay for any possible risk is far too large.
The only way to pay for health care is by pooling risk.
Everyone has to contribute, even though almost no one will ever need any significant pay out.
And the problem then is that whomever runs the pool has to make the payout, not you.
So then there is a problem controlling costs and quality of those medical providers billing the pool.

Private, for profit, insurance companies have proven to be horrible at this because they have no incentive to keep costs down or quality up.
And they do not allow you to control quality or costs either, because you alreadly prepaid.
Prepaying anything is always a horrific idea, and is always essentially a scam.

So the ONLY alternative that has ever worked is public health care.
That is because the large staff of a government run system can ensure both quality and costs.
And while the VA does not pay as much so has worse providers, they still are an example of a system that works.
The VA still does provide much better health care at much lower costs.
That is because you get seen by a number of doctors instead of just one, so any deficiencies in any one doctor can be taken care of by another.
It clearly works, and if everyone would have VA hospital access, clearly health care in the US would be much better and much less expensive.

Then I would assume you have very little experience with the VA. My father uses the VA for some things like prescriptions because it's much cheaper, but he goes to the Cleveland Clinic for anything serious. He never spent one day in a VA hospital even with as many medical problems as he's had. The VA was the primary customer for one of my employers. We lost them because the guy in charge of the VA was on the take--one of them the company I worked for. So I lost a job because of all the VA corruption.

If you work for a company where you gross 700.00 a week, that's seven dollars into your MSA every week. If you start off young, it's likely you won't touch that account for many years down the road. It would get some interest as that time went on as well. I'm not saying it would cover all of your medical needs. What I'm saying is that these providers and insurance companies lose money on all these nickel and dime transactions. It's better off paid directly to the provider to avoid all that paperwork. When insurance and providers save money, so does their client.

With government, you pay them money, and they keep it under a mattress until needed. Insurance companies invest the money you pay for your premium. The profits help offset some of the bills they have to pay. They also dedicate money towards locating fraud; something our government doesn't do. It's way more efficient than government.

When Commie Care was introduced, I was at the post office one day in a long line. The black lady in front of me said "This is ridiculous! We have all these people here, and only one postal worker behind the counter!!!" To that I said "Don't look now, but these are the same people that want to run our healthcare." Oh did she give me a dirty look.

The only reason the VA has inferior doctors is that insurance companies over pay deliberately.
If you allow a government medical service to compete with private health providers, their charges will have to cut on half, and then so will what they pay doctors. So then VA doctors will be better quality.

The VA is vastly better health care than a quarter of the population gets now, which is none at all.
The VA is not at all known for any corruption. It is nonprofit, so almost can't become corrupt.
There is nothing you can pad.

The rate you suggest of $7 a week into a medical savings account would be $350/year, or only $17,500 after 50 years. That is not enough for much of anything, if you actually need surgery. That is more like $100k for anything significant. And while many will not need anything, those that do will need almost 10 times that much. So clearly medical investment funds need to be pooled and shared.

And no, insurance companies and providers do not lose a dime on the small stuff because you are already paying them cash, as they are less than your deductible.

The idea government keeps money effectively under a mattress is totally wrong.
We have a $22 trillion national debt we finance at about 5% interest, so the excess surplus from any medical surplus would go to paying down the debt, just like the Social Security surplus does now. That saves all tax payers huge amounts of money. There is no better investment for taxes than T-Bills.

Insurance companies are the least possible investment.
By forcing you to prepay, they eliminate any possibility for negotiating quality or cost, they deliberately cause costs to be more than double, and they are the most corrupt in terms of trying to get out of paying anything if they can.
And they skim off about half of what people pay in, as the profits they charge for administration.
In contrast, it is well documented that government services, like Medicare have a far lower administrative overhead cost, which is less than 10%.

Your example of the post office having only 1 clerk proves you are wrong.
The reality is that I have never seen more than 1 clerk at FedEx or UPS either, and yet FedEx and UPS charge more than double what the US post office does for the same size package and delivery times.
Anyone criticizing a long wait in a post office does not at all get it.
Any rational person wants long lines, because that saves money and allows for lower charges.
Lower charges is all I care about.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

You are retired. You didn’t go on the ACA. 98%? Link it.

The fact insurance companies changed their policies so that you could not keep your old doctor, is not the fault of ACA.

What? Why are you responding to me? I never said I went on the ACA? You’re batshit crazy. Get lost.

I never said YOU went on ACA.
What I said is that ACA never caused anyone to lose their old doctor.
That was insurance companies, who deliberately made people lose their old doctor by trying to make more money from us.
ACA had nothing to do with it.

Did I? Link it! I never Said that you liar! Link it now. You fat idiot.

Look at what I wrote again.
No where do I say that you said anything at all.
A lot of people are critical of ACA because they lost their old doctors, and the main point I was making is that they are wrong to blame ACA.
ACA had nothing to do with it.
It was not ACA that prevented people from keeping their old doctors, it was their insurance companies deliberately trying to harm people in retaliation for ACA.

So why would insurance companies, who got in on this deal with Commie Care, want to sabotage their very own advantage?

I signed up for Commie Care when my employer (like so many others) dropped that benefit for their employees. My provider is the Cleveland Clinic. Commie Care only offered one company that would allow me to continue that care I've had for my entire life; one plan.

The deal was, they wanted slightly less than one third of my net pay. The plan had a 7K deductible, a 7K out of pocket, a $50.00 doctor copay, no dental and no prescription coverage. Basically yes, I could keep my doctor and facility, but I wouldn't have enough to live on when you include the cost of my medication they didn't cover.

So it's a lie that Commie Care was going to let you keep your doctors and facility at a reasonable cost. One third of net pay every month is not reasonable, especially when you have to get run over by a bus to use the damn policy.

 

[Care4all]

What does a Drivers License have to do with immigration?

It just makes sure drivers have the proper skills and training?

A "Drivers License" has nothing to do with "immigration" per say; but it has a great deal to do with illegal immigration.

Allowing illegal aliens to legally obtain Drivers Licenses not only legitimizes their crime, it diminishes its seriousness; which results in further escalating the crime.

I heard an interesting quote not long ago;
"When a crime is ignored it becomes rampant"
"When a crime is rewarded it becomes epidemic"

I'm pretty sure the US has reached the epidemic stage.
So thank God for Donald Trump!

FYI-
if the illegal came here and stayed, or any first time crosser, the crime of crossing the border illegally is just a misdemeanor....

I do not believe anyone with a misdemeanor crime in this Nation is prevented from getting a driver's license? So in a sense, it's not really a reward for committing a misdemeanor....since anyone with a misdemeanor conviction can have one..... though I can understand your thinking on it being one.

It's a felony if an illegal crosser has been apprehended, gotten their day in court, and an immigration judge convicts them for the misdemeanor, then they are sent home to their country, AND then they make a second attempt entering illegally and are caught, after they were convicted of said first time misdemeanor and deported, and again, get their day in court, and convicted by the immigration judge of the felony...for 2nd time entering illegally.

Believe it or not, before the immigration reform bill under Pres Bush2 passed to strengthen our immigration laws,

it was only a civil offense, equivalent of a parking ticket, with no criminal record attached....

so even though a misdemeanor charge seems so minor, for the criminal offense of crossing illegally now, it's a heck of a lot stronger of a penalty and law, than it was before the reform.

 

[Rigby5]

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

Medical savings accounts do not at all work.
That is because the amount you would have to save in order to be able to pay for any possible risk is far too large.
The only way to pay for health care is by pooling risk.
Everyone has to contribute, even though almost no one will ever need any significant pay out.
And the problem then is that whomever runs the pool has to make the payout, not you.
So then there is a problem controlling costs and quality of those medical providers billing the pool.

Private, for profit, insurance companies have proven to be horrible at this because they have no incentive to keep costs down or quality up.
And they do not allow you to control quality or costs either, because you alreadly prepaid.
Prepaying anything is always a horrific idea, and is always essentially a scam.

So the ONLY alternative that has ever worked is public health care.
That is because the large staff of a government run system can ensure both quality and costs.
And while the VA does not pay as much so has worse providers, they still are an example of a system that works.
The VA still does provide much better health care at much lower costs.
That is because you get seen by a number of doctors instead of just one, so any deficiencies in any one doctor can be taken care of by another.
It clearly works, and if everyone would have VA hospital access, clearly health care in the US would be much better and much less expensive.

Then I would assume you have very little experience with the VA. My father uses the VA for some things like prescriptions because it's much cheaper, but he goes to the Cleveland Clinic for anything serious. He never spent one day in a VA hospital even with as many medical problems as he's had. The VA was the primary customer for one of my employers. We lost them because the guy in charge of the VA was on the take--one of them the company I worked for. So I lost a job because of all the VA corruption.

If you work for a company where you gross 700.00 a week, that's seven dollars into your MSA every week. If you start off young, it's likely you won't touch that account for many years down the road. It would get some interest as that time went on as well. I'm not saying it would cover all of your medical needs. What I'm saying is that these providers and insurance companies lose money on all these nickel and dime transactions. It's better off paid directly to the provider to avoid all that paperwork. When insurance and providers save money, so does their client.

With government, you pay them money, and they keep it under a mattress until needed. Insurance companies invest the money you pay for your premium. The profits help offset some of the bills they have to pay. They also dedicate money towards locating fraud; something our government doesn't do. It's way more efficient than government.

When Commie Care was introduced, I was at the post office one day in a long line. The black lady in front of me said "This is ridiculous! We have all these people here, and only one postal worker behind the counter!!!" To that I said "Don't look now, but these are the same people that want to run our healthcare." Oh did she give me a dirty look.

Rigby is a nut job. Don’t waste your time. He is one of those who believes Jews are responsible for 9/11.

Osama bin Laden said the main reason for the 9/11 attack was the US support of the Israeli abuses of the native Palestinians. Are you saying he was lying and there was some other agenda? If so, what was it?

 

[Rigby5]

In Britain you have the option to buttress UH with a private plan and many there are very unhappy with the UH system. They are also much smaller than the US in terms of population and they don’t have the law that if you’re born there to illegals you automatically become a citizen. I am sure you don’t want to go there. And malpractice insurance is sky high and impacts many MDs. In Britain it costs a lot less to become a doctor as well. I am Sure you don’t want to discuss that either.

I'm all for making it cheaper to become a doctor. We should provide scholarships to promising medical students.

Only 11% of Britons have supplemental health insurance.

England : International Health Care System Profiles

British people are happier with their health care system than we are with ours.

Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery in 'most severe ever' rationing in the NHS

That is a deliberate mischaracterization by the Telegraph headlines.
The Telegraph article itself says, "will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole. The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations."
That is "up to a year" maximum, with most cases being much less.
And it only applies to non-emergency elective surgery, like hip or knee replacement, which can easily be delayed without much harm. People who care so little about their health that they cause their own problems, like smoking over over eating, should not be prioritized over those who need and deserve faster treatment.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

What you are saying that we should just pack it in, quit, turn out the lights, it's hopeless.

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

Medical savings accounts do not at all work.
That is because the amount you would have to save in order to be able to pay for any possible risk is far too large.
The only way to pay for health care is by pooling risk.
Everyone has to contribute, even though almost no one will ever need any significant pay out.
And the problem then is that whomever runs the pool has to make the payout, not you.
So then there is a problem controlling costs and quality of those medical providers billing the pool.

Private, for profit, insurance companies have proven to be horrible at this because they have no incentive to keep costs down or quality up.
And they do not allow you to control quality or costs either, because you alreadly prepaid.
Prepaying anything is always a horrific idea, and is always essentially a scam.

So the ONLY alternative that has ever worked is public health care.
That is because the large staff of a government run system can ensure both quality and costs.
And while the VA does not pay as much so has worse providers, they still are an example of a system that works.
The VA still does provide much better health care at much lower costs.
That is because you get seen by a number of doctors instead of just one, so any deficiencies in any one doctor can be taken care of by another.
It clearly works, and if everyone would have VA hospital access, clearly health care in the US would be much better and much less expensive.

Then I would assume you have very little experience with the VA. My father uses the VA for some things like prescriptions because it's much cheaper, but he goes to the Cleveland Clinic for anything serious. He never spent one day in a VA hospital even with as many medical problems as he's had. The VA was the primary customer for one of my employers. We lost them because the guy in charge of the VA was on the take--one of them the company I worked for. So I lost a job because of all the VA corruption.

If you work for a company where you gross 700.00 a week, that's seven dollars into your MSA every week. If you start off young, it's likely you won't touch that account for many years down the road. It would get some interest as that time went on as well. I'm not saying it would cover all of your medical needs. What I'm saying is that these providers and insurance companies lose money on all these nickel and dime transactions. It's better off paid directly to the provider to avoid all that paperwork. When insurance and providers save money, so does their client.

With government, you pay them money, and they keep it under a mattress until needed. Insurance companies invest the money you pay for your premium. The profits help offset some of the bills they have to pay. They also dedicate money towards locating fraud; something our government doesn't do. It's way more efficient than government.

When Commie Care was introduced, I was at the post office one day in a long line. The black lady in front of me said "This is ridiculous! We have all these people here, and only one postal worker behind the counter!!!" To that I said "Don't look now, but these are the same people that want to run our healthcare." Oh did she give me a dirty look.

I am a frequent flyer with VA. You are talking about other people in your life but you have zero first hand experience.

As for your MSA, you just gave Congress and the President a license to steal. The Federal Government have stolen billions from the SS accounts to date and haven't paid a single penny back. And it's not just a Dem or a Rep, it's both. That doesn't show up in the National Debt but it should. You give them another account like that and it's going to be "Belly up to the Bar, Boys". The Social Security Funds are MY MONEY. What they have done is just plain stealing. Oh, yeah, the promised to pay it back but years later, no payments were made until they think we all have forgotten. And if you haven't noticed lately, laws don't mean a whole hell of a lot in Washington these days by anyone.

The Insurance Companies aren't any better. They have a list of things that they insure. Have something outside that list and they won't pay or they pay only a percentage. The Doctor knows to check with the Insurance Company before he does the procedure. You think you have a great plan until one day, there goes the house. Yah, I know it hasn't happened to you but it's happened to too many people. It ruins lives. And you can list the HMOs with them.

Your idea of the MSA is a good one but you have to find some way to protect the funds. The problem with involving the Federal Government, it might be the greatest idea that has ever been created but there are too many in control that will find ways to "Get Their Cut". Right now, their cut comes from the Lobbiests. There is a reason why the Feds don't want the Mafia in operation. They can't figure a way to get their cut. And besides, the Mafia is rank amateur and the Feds can't stand competition even 2nd rate ones.

I know you will find fault with this bill because it's pulling the R lever but let's take a good look at
H.R.1 — 116th Congress (2019-2020)
Yes, there are things in there that can be improved on. But let's not throw the whole thing out. As it is, it is sitting under Moscow Mitch's Desk waiting for the slow death. And much of it does deal with the corruption in our elections that is built in. While it doesn't deal with the scumbags after they get elected, it helps to get the really big "Secret" money out of the election and gets the lies out of the campaign ads. It also allows the lesser candidates a better chance of competing using matching funds.

For instance, let's look at Bernie and Mayor Pete. Most of Bernies donations are small donations while most of Mayor Pete's donations are primarily from Multi Millionaires and Billionaires. Hillary's main donations came from the Uber Rich as well. Neither of us may care for Bernie but he's done a fantastic job with smaller donations. He just gets a boatload of them. According to the Bill, Bernie would get more matching funds than Mayor Pete. But so would 3 out of the top 5 Democratic Candidates. Mayor Pete and Biden would get the least since most of their donations are of the 2500 buck type from Uber Rich. I don't think it's fair that Klobuchar will lose because she runs out of money even though she made a good showing in NH and Iowa. All of the other 4 went hog wild spending in both places while Amy was on a tight budget. And even so, she's going to run out of money fast and have to drop out. Here total worth (including her Husband) is between 700K to 1.99 mil depending who does the math. Those figures were done by fox so you can almost bet that it's closer to 700K. Their combine annual income is just north of 300K and that includes the book deal she was paid coming to 27K. Compared to the others, she should be on welfare. Most of that income comes from her pension for other government positions. She once was a high paid how powered Lawyer as was her Husband. She went into public service and he went into teaching at a college. They don't have outside interest companies that they own. Between the 2 of them, Amy is the bread winner. Take a good hard look at all the other candidates in the top 5 and you will see that they are in the UBER Rich category. Amy hasn't gotten rich by being a Senator like the others. It's funny, Amy and her Husband live in a 350K house. That's a normal suburban house like millions of others do. BTW, Amy draws 560K from the Federal Pension already. She doesn't make a dime working as a Senator. She doesn't double dip. Even as a President, she wouldn't make a dime because the Government Pension she gets is more than what the President is paid. Like Trump, she wouldn't take the Presidential pay. Unlike Trump, She will squeeze every drop out of every dollar and her golf trips won't cost 1.3 million dollars a trip. But Amy is going to have to drop out soon due to financial reasons.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

Medical savings accounts do not at all work.
That is because the amount you would have to save in order to be able to pay for any possible risk is far too large.
The only way to pay for health care is by pooling risk.
Everyone has to contribute, even though almost no one will ever need any significant pay out.
And the problem then is that whomever runs the pool has to make the payout, not you.
So then there is a problem controlling costs and quality of those medical providers billing the pool.

Private, for profit, insurance companies have proven to be horrible at this because they have no incentive to keep costs down or quality up.
And they do not allow you to control quality or costs either, because you alreadly prepaid.
Prepaying anything is always a horrific idea, and is always essentially a scam.

So the ONLY alternative that has ever worked is public health care.
That is because the large staff of a government run system can ensure both quality and costs.
And while the VA does not pay as much so has worse providers, they still are an example of a system that works.
The VA still does provide much better health care at much lower costs.
That is because you get seen by a number of doctors instead of just one, so any deficiencies in any one doctor can be taken care of by another.
It clearly works, and if everyone would have VA hospital access, clearly health care in the US would be much better and much less expensive.

Then I would assume you have very little experience with the VA. My father uses the VA for some things like prescriptions because it's much cheaper, but he goes to the Cleveland Clinic for anything serious. He never spent one day in a VA hospital even with as many medical problems as he's had. The VA was the primary customer for one of my employers. We lost them because the guy in charge of the VA was on the take--one of them the company I worked for. So I lost a job because of all the VA corruption.

If you work for a company where you gross 700.00 a week, that's seven dollars into your MSA every week. If you start off young, it's likely you won't touch that account for many years down the road. It would get some interest as that time went on as well. I'm not saying it would cover all of your medical needs. What I'm saying is that these providers and insurance companies lose money on all these nickel and dime transactions. It's better off paid directly to the provider to avoid all that paperwork. When insurance and providers save money, so does their client.

With government, you pay them money, and they keep it under a mattress until needed. Insurance companies invest the money you pay for your premium. The profits help offset some of the bills they have to pay. They also dedicate money towards locating fraud; something our government doesn't do. It's way more efficient than government.

When Commie Care was introduced, I was at the post office one day in a long line. The black lady in front of me said "This is ridiculous! We have all these people here, and only one postal worker behind the counter!!!" To that I said "Don't look now, but these are the same people that want to run our healthcare." Oh did she give me a dirty look.

The only reason the VA has inferior doctors is that insurance companies over pay deliberately.
If you allow a government medical service to compete with private health providers, their charges will have to cut on half, and then so will what they pay doctors. So then VA doctors will be better quality.

The VA is vastly better health care than a quarter of the population gets now, which is none at all.
The VA is not at all known for any corruption. It is nonprofit, so almost can't become corrupt.
There is nothing you can pad.

The rate you suggest of $7 a week into a medical savings account would be $350/year, or only $17,500 after 50 years. That is not enough for much of anything, if you actually need surgery. That is more like $100k for anything significant. And while many will not need anything, those that do will need almost 10 times that much. So clearly medical investment funds need to be pooled and shared.

And no, insurance companies and providers do not lose a dime on the small stuff because you are already paying them cash, as they are less than your deductible.

The idea government keeps money effectively under a mattress is totally wrong.
We have a $22 trillion national debt we finance at about 5% interest, so the excess surplus from any medical surplus would go to paying down the debt, just like the Social Security surplus does now. That saves all tax payers huge amounts of money. There is no better investment for taxes than T-Bills.

Insurance companies are the least possible investment.
By forcing you to prepay, they eliminate any possibility for negotiating quality or cost, they deliberately cause costs to be more than double, and they are the most corrupt in terms of trying to get out of paying anything if they can.
And they skim off about half of what people pay in, as the profits they charge for administration.
In contrast, it is well documented that government services, like Medicare have a far lower administrative overhead cost, which is less than 10%.

Your example of the post office having only 1 clerk proves you are wrong.
The reality is that I have never seen more than 1 clerk at FedEx or UPS either, and yet FedEx and UPS charge more than double what the US post office does for the same size package and delivery times.
Anyone criticizing a long wait in a post office does not at all get it.
Any rational person wants long lines, because that saves money and allows for lower charges.
Lower charges is all I care about.

I just made a return to Amazon. I walked into the UPS store with the item only. I was the only person there. They took the item, packaged it, and sent it back to Amazon no charge to me. I'm guessing you never went to a UPS store or FedEx, because I've never had an experience with them similar to the post office.

Government pays about 2/3 of the bill for their patients. To recoup those losses, facilities increase their prices for everybody. They are prohibited by law from charging different insurances with different prices. I worked in the field for ten years, so I know.

Without private healthcare insurance, doctors and facilities would have nowhere to recoup those losses. This is why when you see doctors and clinics close down, it's usually in lower income areas where most clients are government covered and little private insurance to recoup those government losses from. It's also why institutions are refusing to accept new government patients. They can no longer take the loss.

I'm also assuming you missed my post where I worked for a company that was paying off the VA administrator, and I lost my job when the media got word of it. It was my employers largest account. Corruption goes on at the VA all the time. You must have not been focused on the news during the DumBama administration.

 

[Rigby5]

What you are saying that we should just pack it in, quit, turn out the lights, it's hopeless.

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

First one: The VA has just as good of Doctors. They stay not because they can't go to work for a civilian hospital, they primarily do it out of duty. Most are Vets themselves. The Cost isn't the factor they stay or their inability to find higher paying positions. Besides, a normal VA Doctor gets more time on the Golf Course so it ain't all bad.

The rest of what you are saying I agree with. Just be careful, you MSA has to be administered by someone whether it's a hospital or government. You certainly don't want a HMO or Insurance company administering it because that's what we have today. You MSA is the first step in getting RID of the HMO and the Insurance Company and they know it. There are going to invest billions to prevent that and they are going to win. They don't actually have to win. They just have to keep it the same mess it already is.

It would go to a private market, it's just that government would mandate it. Nobody has proposed MSA"s before, at least not seriously, so it won't be stopped by anybody if introduced.

Wrong.
MSAs have been around for over a century, and they have proven to not work well.
People can not save enough to pay for the extremes of a few, and the majority do not need them at all.
So clearly medical costs can only be dealt with by pooling resources between whole large groups of individuals.

But MSAs are terrible because if they are invested privately, they can and will sometimes disappear.
Stocks go under, companies go bankrupt, and that does not even count deliberate corruption.
And then there still is the problem of having a third party paying, so that then you still will have no control over costs or quality.
And you do NOT want a private company profiting from investing your MSA, because we as a country need that MSA money to help finance the national debt.
There is no better investment than the national debt, just like we do with the Social Security surplus.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

What you are saying that we should just pack it in, quit, turn out the lights, it's hopeless.

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

First one: The VA has just as good of Doctors. They stay not because they can't go to work for a civilian hospital, they primarily do it out of duty. Most are Vets themselves. The Cost isn't the factor they stay or their inability to find higher paying positions. Besides, a normal VA Doctor gets more time on the Golf Course so it ain't all bad.

The rest of what you are saying I agree with. Just be careful, you MSA has to be administered by someone whether it's a hospital or government. You certainly don't want a HMO or Insurance company administering it because that's what we have today. You MSA is the first step in getting RID of the HMO and the Insurance Company and they know it. There are going to invest billions to prevent that and they are going to win. They don't actually have to win. They just have to keep it the same mess it already is.

It would go to a private market, it's just that government would mandate it. Nobody has proposed MSA"s before, at least not seriously, so it won't be stopped by anybody if introduced.

I can think of almost 600 people that will not go for it. Or at least enough to block it. They won't get their "Cut".

 

[Rigby5]

Wow, you buy into all the right wing lies.

First, malpractice is only a SMALL slice of medical costs. In fact, total costs of malpractice expenses, including both insurance and "preventive medicine" (I.E. taking the extra step so you don't cut off the wrong fucking leg) is all of 55 Billion a year out of a 3 Trillion Health Care industry, or about 2.4%. Taking away people's right to seek redress against medical incompetence (96,000 Americans a year die from medical mistakes, you think they are all faking it?)

Britian also has universal health care.. I'm sure you don't want to go there.

The True Cost Of Medical Malpractice - It May Surprise You

And in your article, they state it was written by people at Harvard, a very left wing institute who I'm sure is behind socialized medical care.

Defensive medicine is a very large contributor to the rise of healthcare costs in the United States. DefensiveMedicine.org cites surveys that estimate defensive medicine adds costs of up to $850 billion annually in the United States. It may contribute as much as 34% of the annual healthcare costs in the United States.

Defensive Medicine and How It Affects Healthcare Costs

• Medical malpractice insurance varies greatly based on location and specialty. Insurance premiums for obstetricians/gynecologists in New York were as high as $215,000 in 2017 while in California they were just under $50,000.
• Male physicians are also more likely to be sued than female doctors. About 40 percent of male doctors have been sued during their careers while almost 23 percent of female doctors have been sued. Just over 20 percent of male doctors had more than one suit filed against them while just under 10 percent of female doctors were sued more than once.

Coverage can also affect medical malpractice insurance premiums. Doctors who want more coverage for multiple practices will pay more, as will physicians who need coverage across state lines. The malpractice insurance cost by specialty will also vary. Some specialties, such as orthopedic surgeries, are considered higher risk for insurance carriers, and premiums will reflect this.

How Much Does Medical Malpractice Insurance Cost?

Again, quality for SOME people, not everyone, and that's the problem. I've got mine fuck you might work for your house or car, but it shouldn't work for our health care.

The only way to reduce the waste of medical malpractice costs, is to have more government oversight to prevent malpractice.
The cause of high medical malpractice insurance is a history of poor performance by doctors.
Obviously doctors in private practice will always be guilty of making mistakes.
However, if you have them working for agencies like the VA, that is greatly reduced because they work more in teams.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

I don't think it is because we can always come up with something better. But it's so complex that would be a hell of a challenge.

We've been doing it wrong all along. The first step is to lower the cost of healthcare, and then decide how we pay for it. But the costs are what needs to be addressed first, and thus far, nobody has been able to do that, not a President, not a House member, not a Senate member.

Okay, let's take it one piece at a time.

Lower the cost of healthcare. This is complicated. You have

Facility
You can't change the Hospitals but you can add neighborhood clinics that are public supported. The Clinics would charge according to the income of the patient. Yes, the clinic is going to need money from public taxes. But it gets the ball rolling. We aren't far away from that now. Preventive Medicine is the best investment we can have.

Support Equipment
This going to have to a government intervention. Sorry, Capitalists, this is one area where Capitalism has gotten way too greedy. But the Government doesn't actually do it themselves. They appoint civilian over see er groups appointed by the local government to be the watch dog. For the Federal, I am sure that a group of Doctors would volunteer to oversee such a program. Then the Suppliers would have to justify their costs to the panels.

Staff Support
Here we get creative. Doctors already moonlight. But if we use the VA method and don't allow them to then a Doctor can't get bloody assed rich like they can today. For instance, the VA pays between 129K and 139K for their Doctors and doesn't allow moonlighting. But across town at the local hospital they still pay between 129K and 139K annually but they allow moonlighting. That same doctor ends up making more than 500K a year. So the VA has a shortage of Doctors while the Hospital has more than enough. This applies to any Doctor that wants an office or affiliation with any given hospital. This does not affect the independent Specialists. If you can't live on 139K a year you just can't live. That's much more than almost all Business Owners make.

This is just the start. But you will notice that it takes community involvement. Instead of the HMOs and Insurance Companies calling all the shots, the Community and the Doctors start calling the shots.

Now, about "You get to keep your Doctor". You didn't leave your Doctor, he left you. he decided not to accept funds from the ACA and to keep accepting funds from only the Insurance Companies, Drug Companies and the HMOs because he got nice little "Gifts" from them. Under the ACA, there were no nice little "Gifts". I suggest you work towards getting rid of the Corruption that is rampant in our Health Care today.

Medical is like anything else. The better you are, the more wages you are worth. There are good doctors and not so good doctors. There are good hospitals and not so good hospitals. The best doctors make the best money like in any line of work. That's why the VA doesn't have very good physicians.

In your estimate what doctors make, you didn't consider their largest cost--malpractice insurance. Malpractice insurance can rage from 8K a year to over 200K a year, depending on what kind of medicine they practice and what areas they are practicing in. Malpractice is needed because we are a lawsuit happy country. The solution to that problem is what Britain does, and that is have a loser pays all law. Sue anybody you like, but if you lose, you are liable for all the costs associated with the person or company you tried to sue. That would reduce phony lawsuits by the billions in this country, and certainly would help in the healthcare field.

Next is administration costs. If you read any articles from CEO"s of hospitals and insurance companies, you'd discover that administration fees are very costly. A person goes to the doctor for 80 or 100 bucks. That gets billed to your insurance, and they run back and forth with the provider to come to a settlement, and it costs them a small fortune which is paid for by the premiums we pay.

A mandatory medical savings account would reduce those costs for both provider and insurance company. A 1% deduction from your gross pay that goes into an MSA. When you see a doctor or visit an ER, you swipe your MSA card and the bill is paid.

There are just so many ways to reduce medial costs without sacrificing the great quality of medical care we currently have.

First one: The VA has just as good of Doctors. They stay not because they can't go to work for a civilian hospital, they primarily do it out of duty. Most are Vets themselves. The Cost isn't the factor they stay or their inability to find higher paying positions. Besides, a normal VA Doctor gets more time on the Golf Course so it ain't all bad.

The rest of what you are saying I agree with. Just be careful, you MSA has to be administered by someone whether it's a hospital or government. You certainly don't want a HMO or Insurance company administering it because that's what we have today. You MSA is the first step in getting RID of the HMO and the Insurance Company and they know it. There are going to invest billions to prevent that and they are going to win. They don't actually have to win. They just have to keep it the same mess it already is.

It would go to a private market, it's just that government would mandate it. Nobody has proposed MSA"s before, at least not seriously, so it won't be stopped by anybody if introduced.

Wrong.
MSAs have been around for over a century, and they have proven to not work well.
People can not save enough to pay for the extremes of a few, and the majority do not need them at all.
So clearly medical costs can only be dealt with by pooling resources between whole large groups of individuals.

But MSAs are terrible because if they are invested privately, they can and will sometimes disappear.
Stocks go under, companies go bankrupt, and that does not even count deliberate corruption.
And then there still is the problem of having a third party paying, so that then you still will have no control over costs or quality.
And you do NOT want a private company profiting from investing your MSA, because we as a country need that MSA money to help finance the national debt.
There is no better investment than the national debt, just like we do with the Social Security surplus.

Once again, MSA"s are not for all medical expenses. They would be used for nickel and dime expense such as office visits, lab tests, physical therapy, medical equipment and things like that. When those expenses exceed your MSA savings, only then would it go to the insurance companies. That would save a lot of administration costs.

MSA's were never a mandate. So you can't honestly say they couldn't work. As for investments, I've had an IRA for nearly 25 years. It easily survived the last recession. In fact, the company that handles our account stopped buying shares during the downfall. They sat on our contributions and waited until the market recovered. I was like buying three shares for the price of one. Now my IRA account is doing fantastically. This is what happens when you place your money with a reputable investment company. The government? Every program is headed for a brick wall.

 

[Indeependent]

In Britain you have the option to buttress UH with a private plan and many there are very unhappy with the UH system. They are also much smaller than the US in terms of population and they don’t have the law that if you’re born there to illegals you automatically become a citizen. I am sure you don’t want to go there. And malpractice insurance is sky high and impacts many MDs. In Britain it costs a lot less to become a doctor as well. I am Sure you don’t want to discuss that either.

I'm all for making it cheaper to become a doctor. We should provide scholarships to promising medical students.

Only 11% of Britons have supplemental health insurance.

England : International Health Care System Profiles

British people are happier with their health care system than we are with ours.

They do? N.H.S. Overwhelmed in Britain, Leaving Patients to Wait

If we change the 14th Amendment, improve our immigration laws and deport the majority of the illegals here, give doctors a 10% tax rate for their first 30 years of practice I would support UH. Otherwise it would never work here due to costs and likely doctor shortages.

Immigrants have an almost negligable effect on our medical costs, and it is easy to have many more doctors if we just lower tuition costs.

You are correct; Legal immigrants are not a drain on our system.

 

[Rigby5]

He never presented this great health care plan he had ready to go and that he said everyone was going to love.

It's entirely up to the president to decide to end the wars like he promised. While he can not get his budget passed on his own not a single one is balanced like he promised. Should I continue? No, you'll just be dishonest about it all.

Hussien promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. He promised us families would save 2.5K a year on healthcare insurance. He promised us great coverage with his plan and no more garbage policies. So what did we end up with?

Trump said he was going to get rid of Commie Care, and then replace it with something else. As I stated, a President can only give you what he promised with the cooperation of the majorities in Congress. He didn't have that, and since any government program would rely on tax money, you can't have two programs doing the same thing.

What Warren and Sander's are promising is unrealistic. It's unaffordable and would leave us as slaves to the government. I really don't think anybody has a reasonable solution to our problem.

I kept my doctor and insurance. So did over 98 percent of Americans

Trump stated before he was elected that he had a plan that was better and cheaper than Obamacare. Turned out he had nothing and ordered Congress to come up with something and they failed miserably

Who told the bigger lie?

They both told a lie. And no, 98% of the people didn't keep their doctor or hospital. Trump stated that Commie Care had to be gone first before we can do anything. So he was more truthful than Hussein because he couldn't get rid of it.

Actually, it is more like 99 percent kept their insurance

Trump said he had a healthcare plan that was better and cheaper than Obamacare.....he lied, he had no idea what a healthcare plan was

He also said he would repeal and replace. He had no replacement

Repeal comes before replacement. Please post a credible link to your claim that 99% kept their healthcare. Most people get their plans through their employers, and like my employer, a lot of them dropped that coverage.

Small Businesses Are Dropping Health Coverage; Large Employers Hold Steady

That is crazy.
It took years to get ACA figured out and finally get it working.
Repeal means you have nothing, and likely years to come up with some sort of replacement, if any.
Clearly a slow transformation is the only possible means of fixing problems.
Repeal without a replacement means massive death tolls.

Again, ACA did not cause ANY loss of your previous doctors.
When employers or insurance companies decide to drop old plans, old preferred providers, etc., that is their fault, not the fault of ACA.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

The fact insurance companies changed their policies so that you could not keep your old doctor, is not the fault of ACA.

What? Why are you responding to me? I never said I went on the ACA? You’re batshit crazy. Get lost.

I never said YOU went on ACA.
What I said is that ACA never caused anyone to lose their old doctor.
That was insurance companies, who deliberately made people lose their old doctor by trying to make more money from us.
ACA had nothing to do with it.

Did I? Link it! I never Said that you liar! Link it now. You fat idiot.

Look at what I wrote again.
No where do I say that you said anything at all.
A lot of people are critical of ACA because they lost their old doctors, and the main point I was making is that they are wrong to blame ACA.
ACA had nothing to do with it.
It was not ACA that prevented people from keeping their old doctors, it was their insurance companies deliberately trying to harm people in retaliation for ACA.

So why would insurance companies, who got in on this deal with Commie Care, want to sabotage their very own advantage?

I signed up for Commie Care when my employer (like so many others) dropped that benefit for their employees. My provider is the Cleveland Clinic. Commie Care only offered one company that would allow me to continue that care I've had for my entire life; one plan.

The deal was, they wanted slightly less than one third of my net pay. The plan had a 7K deductible, a 7K out of pocket, a $50.00 doctor copay, no dental and no prescription coverage. Basically yes, I could keep my doctor and facility, but I wouldn't have enough to live on when you include the cost of my medication they didn't cover.

So it's a lie that Commie Care was going to let you keep your doctors and facility at a reasonable cost. One third of net pay every month is not reasonable, especially when you have to get run over by a bus to use the damn policy.

The ACA was sabotaged from the very start. It never had a chance. Instead of all sides working to get it where it should be, both sides just wanted to fight while on side gutted it even before it was completely implemented. There were a lot of really worthless plans that ACA wouldn't cover. Yes, those plans were cheap. But the rule was, if you do get sick, just get sick a little and get well fast. This works for a 20 year old usually. That is, until it doesn't and there goes the house, the car, your credit rating, etc..

We both agree that we need something and rehashing the ACA is just another way of not doing anything.

 

[Rigby5]

What does a Drivers License have to do with immigration?

It just makes sure drivers have the proper skills and training?

A "Drivers License" has nothing to do with "immigration" per say; but it has a great deal to do with illegal immigration.

Allowing illegal aliens to legally obtain Drivers Licenses not only legitimizes their crime, it diminishes its seriousness; which results in further escalating the crime.

I heard an interesting quote not long ago;
"When a crime is ignored it becomes rampant"
"When a crime is rewarded it becomes epidemic"

I'm pretty sure the US has reached the epidemic stage.
So thank God for Donald Trump!

That makes no sense.
What a state accomplishes by issuing driver's licenses to illegals is to ensure they are safer on the roads.
Nothing else.
They are not supposed to be any more legitimized because a state issued driver's license is not supposed to be used as an ID by anyone.
Lots of people do not even have driver's licenses.